Neanderthal groups lived alongside modern humans

Duncan Murray

Our ancient, heavy-browed cousins, the Neanderthals, would have had plenty of time to interact, share ideas and culture with humans and even interbreed, according to what is the most reliable study of artefacts from that era.

An international team of scientists analysed pieces of charcoal, shell and bone from archaeological sites across Europe, from Spain to Russia, to determine an overlap with human occupation of between 2600 and 5400 years.

Rachel Wood from the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University was part of the team.

"The two groups lived in neighbouring regions for several thousand years," Dr Wood said. "They would have had plenty of time to interact."

The study shows a period of co-existence in Europe that was previously undetermined. Past carbon dating methods were prone to contamination that led to variations in results.

"We tried to select samples that were very well associated with human activity, so things like shell pendants … and we tried to date them using the best techniques that we have available at the moment," Dr Wood said.

Advertisement

"So ones that we know will fully clean those samples of contamination before we date them. What we've got is a much cleaner data set and one that we can be quite confident in."

Previously some believed that Neanderthals were quite quickly driven to extinction when humans moved north from Africa but the new evidence suggests they survived for millennia afterwards.

This overlap means that Neanderthals may have picked up some of the practices of modern humans such as symbolic behaviour, like creating shell jewellery, which is a precursor to language, art and religion.

"We don't really know how much symbolic activity the Neanderthals were capable of, but it's starting to look like they were capable of a bit," Dr Wood said

"There's some new work coming out of Italy where it looks like Neanderthals were using feathers from big birds like eagles and raptors. It's becoming more cultural in a way because there's symbolic activity that we're only just starting to see. For me it's the symbolic activity which makes Neanderthals quite exciting to study."